Hi my name is Arcangelo, and I am a writer. I didn't know I was a writer until a guest that I had at my house asked me, after seeing all my journals: ''Are you a writer?'' and I said: '' Yeah, I guess I am.''

I am very glad that my first 2 attempts of starting a blog here where deleted by the mods. They where political posts.

Whoever that mod was thank you very much.

My first post is gonna be about how the people around you determine your chances of success in life.

When I first read Jim Rohn's super famous quote: ''You're The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With'', I knew i had some work to do in my social network.

I knew i had to take some distance from some of my friends and made the decision of cutting some of them off completely.

In my journals I started writing down the number of days i have gone without contacting them. This was with the ones I was trying to cut off completely. I was like if i can go 100 days w/o seeing this person that means I have succeeded in my goal of cutting ties completely.

It all started with Som. I knew Som when i started hosting cash games at my house. It didn't take me a lot of time to figure out Som was a pathological liar or something. You cannot be friends with someone that lies about everything all the time. So funny. When I discovered about Som's personality disorder I started reading about compulsive lying. Turns out these people perceive their lives to be pretty boring as they are. So they feel the need to spice reality with lies to look interesting and appealing to others.

Next one in the line was Freddie. Freddie was a scammer. The type of guy who would eat half a burger and then pull out one of his hairs and put in the burger so he could get another burger. This was in junior high LOL! Can not be your friend.

Next one in the line was Jay. Jay had psychological issues. His mom died from cancer and he is/was angry at life. Tried to be his friend but he didn't care about nothing, and had anger issues. He was a drug dealer who didn't care about getting busted. On top of that he decides to get a gun and to carry it wherever he goes of course with no papers. His anger was directed towards me one day at the casino and that was it. Can not be friends with someone with anger issues who hasn't got over his mom's dead who carries a gun everywhere.

And the last one is Dee. I have been struggling with how to deal with Dee. Some days i feel like cutting him off completely some days i feel like just taking distance from him.

I guess we can call Dee a deadbeat.

He has been unemployed for 10 years! He is like a 33 years old adult child (kidult) His parents pay for his everything. House, food, gas, clothes, weed.
He is being enabled. Dee is a total mooch not a desirable trait for a friend.
Actually Mooch and Friend can't/don't go in the same sentence.
He mooches from his girl too... Hard. Like he just got a laptop from her.
So funny. His girlfriend gets anonymous calls telling her that Dee is not good for her. And if she changes her phone # she gets the same call LOL!
It's obviously her parents. Pretty sure his girlfriend gives him gas money too.
Because the other day he came from his girlfriend and wanted to mooch smoke from me, he was like: -''I don't have money but I have gas''

LOL!

After writing this I see that what I really want is to cut him off completely.
Like limit my interactions with him to a maximum of 3 times a year. Part of me wants to not to cut him off completely just because of curiosity haha! I wanna see how he is doing 2-5 years from now. Because there's another quote, a mean one:

'' Success is not enough, your friends must fail ''

Don't know the author sorry.

I had what you could call ''relapses'' with all of this friends. One day I would say I would cut off Som completely just to go to the casino with him that night. I used him as my driver. Which wouldn't make me proud or happy.

One day I would say I would cut off Jay completely just to be smoking with him that night.

One day I would say I would cut off Dee completely just to be smoking with him that night.

As of right now i am still in the relapsing period with Dee. It has been 2 days w/o contact. But i have made some progress I don't call him he calls me. The thing is that I answer. LOL!

I am doing the slow-but sure fade away.

With all these relapses I started asking myself if i was destroying myself.
I started asking myself if i was addicted to toxic friendships/people.
So i took a codependency test. Think I scored high on that one. And I was able to recognize that Dee is a narcissistic **** LOL!

The exception was Freddie. Kinda. After months of no contact he called me because he needed a cash out but I never answered he was like ''why are you not picking up?'' LOL!

Couple of things I learned:

1. Acknowledge the warning signs. Wish I would have before, so it would have been easier and faster to cut them off. Because life is too short.

2. Liars, Thieves, Scammers, People with anger issues carrying unregistered firearms, and Lazy-Moocher Mofugas are not the best friends one can have.

First i wanna talk about my own TV addiction and how it started.
When i was a kid in primary school TV would be my babysitter after school.
This was my routine: go to school come back and watch 4 hours of TV at my grandma's waiting for my stepdad to take me home. At home i will do school work before dinner and after dinner i would watch like 2-3 more hours of TV.
During the weekends i could very easily watch 8 hours of tv a day
This went on for 12 years, more than enough to develop any addiction

Thing about TV addiction is that people think is harmless. It isn't.

TV makes you lazy, dumb and it makes you fear the world.
TV makes your life 2 dimensional. You live your life through the characters of your movies and reality shows, instead of living your own life.
TV wastes a lot of time.

As of right now i have been TV-less for 3 days. This year I went TV-less from january to august but one sunday i was superbored and decided to watch a movie.

Another thing that i have noticed lately about TV is that it makes you to be OK with people making justice by their own hands.

All of us have watched a movie and say i hope this guy gets killed in this movie. And when the character is finally murdered by the hero we are satisfied we are happy that someone murdered someone. LOL!

Poker is addictive. You and I are addicted to poker. Diff is i came to accept it.
I thought playing all night all tired was ''working hard''. No it was not. It was just an addict exhausting his resources.

It all started with me and Dee looking for a safe place to smoke instead of the streets so we went to a home game.

Long story short: I got hooked.

Started going to the casino, going to home games, reading about poker, watching it on TV, and the worst: hosting games at my place 4-5 nights a week.
Some of these nights will turn into mornings. All these while developing an alcohol addiction and dropping out of uni.

Fast forward 6 months: no job, no car, no girl, no $$$
Freddie shows up at my place to tell me he found a job playing poker. I am like: -''U bluffing right?''
He then proceeds to tell me the details and that i am coming with. Nice!

These staking deal is super cool they gave you $500/month just by showing up, like paid training.

It was 50/50 30% rakeback. After the 3 months you are on your own. I kept playing for them for about a year making $60-$80 a week.

Somehow i find a ''real job'' and kept playing for the backers until they say that we all suck at poker and that they are leaving the country.

Freddie was good at poker so he convinces the backers to form an elite team. I was among the chosen ones. Even though i was no good i really put in the effort and the hands. So they had faith in me.

After these backers leave some other backers gather ALL the players from the previous staking deal and they asked if i want in i ofc say: -''Yes!''

So now i have 3 jobs, all from home.

Here is where my life goes to **** the next 3 years. I know that making 60-80 dollars a week is the very best definition of someone's life being ****, but it got worse.

Today I saw an old thread about hourly rates being bumped on this forum. Thought about putting this there but i decided to put it here:

Let's say you you crush 100 NLz.
Now a days crushing that level is like making 3BB per/100 hands.
Let's include the rake.
It takes 10-15 minutes to play 100 hands 4 tabling zoom.

So. A person with those skills makes 12-15 dollars per hour.
Personally things will be interesting if we where looking at 120-150 dollars per hour.
That'll be playing (and crushing) $1000 NL

When is gonna be that? Prolly never. So, why bother?
In the meantime an army of regs are basically breaking even or making chump change, raking for hours on end for the site that does not even want them there in the first place.
An army of regulars who got a spit on the face when Amaya took over.
But we all still play there. Why? Because is the best software ever.

We all fool ourselves in many ways. I can confidently say I self deceived myself with poker. Now i see it and it gives me peace. Funny thing is i still play, i still win, and i still dream about crushing one day.